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Glen Chernen wants to be mayor, but both critics and supporters are confused about what he stands for

VANCOUVER—Glen Chernen is convinced something is rotten at city hall and believes the only way to fix it is to become mayor.

The Dunbar resident, who says he hasn’t held a conventional job in 20 years but makes a living managing his own investments, has become increasingly absorbed with examining city land deals and what he believes are conflicts of interest. He now spends nearly all his time doing this, he told StarMetro in an interview on Wednesday.

Glen Chernen is one of three candidates in the running for the Non-Partisan Association’s mayoral nomination. (Jennifer Gauthier / StarMetro)

“Somebody needs to go in there and start operating the city to the benefit of the public,” Chernen said.

Chernen co-founded the Cedar Party and briefly ran for office in the last civic election, but this time around he’s hitched his wagon to an established political party. The Non-Partisan Association board chose Chernen, along with two other candidates, to run for the party’s mayoral nomination.

The move set off a political drama that has revealed a power struggle between two factions: people who believe adding more housing and densifying neighbourhoods is necessary to fix the city’s extremely unaffordable living situation, and those who believe developers have too much influence over city hall and are calling for more measures to slow demand for housing, especially from offshore buyers.

Bremner, a public-relations executive and former B.C. Liberal staffer, has championed the supply argument and has won followers from Abundant Housing Vancouver, a group that advocates denser housing. Chernen is supported by some members of a group called HALT, which advocates taxation targeting foreign buyers and people who have bought property in B.C. but don’t pay income taxes here.

Although Mirza and Fung have publicly said they support Chernen, he insists he has no formal arrangement with HALT and denies that HALT members are supporting him.

“There are things that I think people in that organization and myself agree with, and that’s that the City of Vancouver has some deep-rooted problems in the way they manage their real estate and the way they approve real-estate rezonings,” Chernen said.

He noted he does not support every measure designed to tackle speculation in real estate.

Chernen opposes a new surtax recently introduced by the B.C. NDP government that increases property tax for homes worth over $3 million. He said he is personally affected by the school tax increase. But his opposition to the tax hasn’t dimmed his admiration of David Eby, B.C.’s attorney general, who has focused on money laundering and supports taxation on real-estate speculation.

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Chernen is also not sure about the City of Vancouver’s new empty homes tax.

“I think, in theory, that it’s a good idea,” Chernen said. “But I’m not a fan of big brother creating more rules, taking away property rights.”

There are critics and supporters who both say they’re not entirely sure what Chernen stands for.

“He’s always trying to play both sides, it seems,” said Jennifer Bradshaw, a member of Abundant Housing. “As far as I know, HALT is a supporter of the school tax, and Raza Mirza, who is a spokesperson for HALT, is a Chernen supporter.”

Mirza previously told StarMetro he did not agree with Chernen on the school tax issue but for now continues to support him for mayor.

Paul Doroshenko is a lawyer who has filed freedom-of-information requests to challenge B.C.’s vehicle emissions testing rules and roadside prohibition penalties for people caught driving under the influence. He admires Chernen’s doggedness and thinks the investigative work Chernen does is important.

“He’s a very intense guy. He would make a very interesting mayor. It would be a major shakeup and I don’t think it would be a destructive shakeup,” Doroshenko said, adding that he will probably vote for Chernen.

Still, he said: “I can’t pin down his ideology. Maybe we’re in a post-ideology era.”

Chernen describes himself as a fiscal conservative, but “with a heart.” He then mused, “Am I part socialist? I don’t know. That’s where I think I have this common bond with guys like David Eby and the people in HALT.”

To make housing more affordable, Chernen said he would allow extra density only when developers agree to put a covenant on the new homes, to ensure they’ll be sold to people who live and work in Vancouver. He doesn’t know exactly how it would work, but it could be that the properties would be available to Canadian citizens and to others who could produce “four or five years of T4s” to show they pay income tax in Canada.

On Twitter he’s promised to rip out the 10th Ave. bike lane with “heavy equipment” and says he’s also not a fan of the Point Grey bike lane. But, he said, he doesn’t oppose all separated bike lanes in the city. He also opposes the removal of the Georgia and Dunsmuir viaducts, two sections of elevated highway the city plans to replace with an at-grade roadway, parks and new housing. He believes the viaducts removal will turn East Vancouver “into a parking lot.”

Chernen’s critics have pointed to several court challenges he launched and lost. When he tried to challenge Mayor Gregor Robertson’s nomination papers, arguing they were void because the correct residential address hadn’t been entered, the judge wrote that the application was without merit.

When Chernen argued in another case that Robertson was in conflict of interest over a city building that had been leased to local social-media management company Hootsuite, the judge wrote that the suit was an abuse of process.

Chernen attempted to challenge why the 2015 assessed value of Oakridge Centre had dropped by $300 million after the shopping centre’s owner appealed to BC Assessment. The panel hearing the case wrote that Chernen was unprepared, lacked expertise and made unfounded allegations of corruption. They ordered him to pay the costs of the challenge to the owner of the shopping centre.

But Chernen’s concerns about a complicated Yaletown land swap deal were shared by Eby, then an Opposition MLA, who raised the issue in the legislature. Details about the deal were eventually released to the media, showing the private developer received a low interest-rate “bridge loan” from B.C. Housing so the developer could get started on a market condo tower after completing the social-housing portion of the project.

Chernen says the court cases were waged “for the public good.”

“I’m the most qualified to do this job,” he said. “People are very worried about me maybe raining on their parade because I’m going to be looking out for the people of this city, not the development industry.”

Jen St. Denis is a Vancouver-based reporter covering affordability and city hall. Follow her on Twitter: @jenstden

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